More Research: Competition Makes Groups More Creative

One of the key elements of things like copyright and patent laws, are that they are really attempts to eliminate certain forms of competition. That’s always struck me as an odd idea, since it’s competition that leads to greater innovation — as has been shown over and over again in the economic research. So this following study shouldn’t surprise anyone, but Glyn Moody points us to a new study that shows that groups who are put in greater and greater competitive situations, come up with more creative solutions to challenges they’re given.

This should be common sense, of course. However, what strikes me is why people think it actually makes sense to limit competition in the creative industries, where you would think that greater competition, leading to greater creativity, would be a good thing? Already, we’re seeing that smart creative types have realized that they need to “compete with free” and they do so in increasingly creative ways. Shouldn’t we be encouraging that kind of creativity from the creative community?

Permalink | Comments | Email This Story





This entry was posted in Syndicated. Bookmark the permalink.

Comments are closed.